Strauss-Kahn played key role in vice ring, judge rules

Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the disgraced former IMF chief, played an "actual and crucial" role in a multinational prostitution network, judges in France concluded.

The one-time French presidential hopeful was not only aware that women with whom he had sex at orgies were paid-for prostitutes but he was the "instigator" of the vice ring, the judges ruled. They decided to reject a request to drop an inquiry into an alleged group-sex vice racket.

Mr Strauss-Kahn, 64, could face up to 20 years in prison after a court in northern France last month ordered a formal investigation to proceed into his alleged role in the racket. He has admitted attending "libertine soirees" in France and the US, but said that he had no idea that some of the women present were being paid for their services.

On December 19, a court in Douai rejected a request to drop the inquiry. In the ruling, part of which was published yesterday (Thursday) by Le Figaro newspaper, the judges are cited as finding evidence pointing to his "actual and crucial participation in acts of pimping".

The evidence suggests that he "could not have been unaware about these young women's status". The judges supported their conclusions by citing these women's "clothing and behaviour; as provocative as it was vulgar".

Judges in Lille yesterday questioned Mr Strauss-Kahn in the presence of an escort girl present during the soirees.

Mr Strauss-Kahn's lawyers have accused the judge of being biased and seeking to "preach morality" to a "simple swinger". The charges, they say are an "abhorrent intellectual construction".